Hazem Mohamed Elshafee

Hazem Mohamed Elshafee is one of about twenty Egyptian adults who come to the Al-Kayan community center in Cairo twice a week for English classes that I teach with several other DukeEngagers. He was born in Kaluobia the biggest city near Sinduon, the village where he grew up. Very interested in learning and tradition from an early age, he enjoyed village life immensely. Hazem's eyes glow when he reminisces about village tea brewed over a wood fire, far superior to the city tea here in Cairo. As a child he fondly remembers wandering the family farm with homemade slingshots. Sinduon is a large enough village that Hazem was able to attend schools close to home through secondary school. He frequently returns to the village to visit family, celebrate high holidays, and check up on the family farm.

Hazem left the village to attend 6 October University where he studied Mechotronic Engineering, a combination of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. He now works for the Cairo Metro as a maintenance engineer. After one of our first classes together he walked with us to El-Demerdesh metro station. I turned away to buy a metro ticket, and when I looked back Hazem had deftly removed the covering of one the defunct mechanized turnstiles. Within a minute he had run a complete diagnostic and with a few adjustments to the whizzing belts and circuits, the turnstile was functioning once again.

Hazem is always bright and engaged. He’s very excited about improving his English, and it’s apparent that he invests himself fully in everything he chooses to undertake. He’s a jokester and he always has a giddy laugh brewing just under the surface.

Like most Egyptians, he has mixed feelings about the Revolution. Mubarak had been in power for almost his entire life until the Revolution, and Hazem is part of the generation (those now in their 20’s and 30’s) most negatively affected by the failures of the old regime. So the idea of change and Mubarak’s departure are exciting prospects for him. Nevertheless, he is uncertain of the Revolution's future as of July 9. The protests now feel more like festivals, with families and lovers strolling leisurely through the square as vendors sell sweets and t-shirts. He wants to see Egyptians developing and executing plans for a better future while simultaneously protesting for democracy and restitution. He sees some Egyptians using the protests as an alternative to more practical means of improving their situations; they wake up, grab a blanket, and head to Tahrir, rather than going out to find work. Nevertheless he recognizes that many of these protestors are without any alternative recourse.

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Hazem as both his teacher and his friend. We both like trading stories about our native cultures and experiences in our very different homes. Yet all things considered, I watch him moving through life day-to-day as I would expect any of my American friends to if they were operating with and in the same cultural and historical background and context. Hazem thinks that the internet should be restricted in some ways, and he would be uncomfortable wearing shorts in public, but ultimately he is motivated by his love of God, family, and country. He dreams about a better future as an individual and for Egypt collectively, and he pursues those dreams with optimistic ambition. I admire his determination, extraordinary work ethic, and above all his propensity for laughter and celebration of the simple parts of the human experience that make our seemingly mundane lives extraordinary.

Some pictures I stole from Veronica Fournier, a fellow DukeEngager

Day trip into the city with the kids from Ana Al Masry

Head stand competition with Ahmed at Al-Azhar Gardens

Forum on the United States' Involvement in the Egyptian Revolution at Cairo University

Outside Ana Al-Masry

American/Egyptian Fusion jam band playing a few blocks from our apartment

The Question of Privilege

So I finally have the time to blog again-- now that I’m stuck in the apartment with food poisoning. I don’t know whether it was the ful and falafel sandwich from a very local hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the week-old pizza and dipping sauces that I faithfully enjoyed to the end (holy relics of my long-lost country’s cuisine), or just the fact that I rarely wash my hands between playing with the street children and eating the food they prepare for us in the desert. Regardless, I’m enjoying the break, despite the frequent trips to the bathroom.

Driven by hunger and my ancestral instinct to hunt and gather, I left the apartment mid-day today to forage for some food. In the course of my brief foray (the food poisoning has me on a short timetable), I saw a gattling gun mounted to the back of a pick-up truck, protestors camping in Tahrir square, and children sleeping in gutters along the side-streets. Then I found and devoured a McFlurry.

When we talk about third world countries, I see images of huts in Africa, nomads in the desert, or rural villages in South America. It’s disconcerting to see third world poverty and disorganization in a country where everyone wears jeans, owns a cell phone, and watches American movies.

During our first week in Cairo, I met one of the arsonists who set the National Democratic Party HQ on fire in Tahrir during the protests earlier this year. He’s my age, and he wants the same things I do: a solid education and the opportunity to work hard to build the future he dreams of. Due to forces out of our control, I found myself in America where I very much have those opportunities, while he was born in Egypt without the means for a stellar education at a time when a quarter of people 20-30 years old are unemployed.

How do I reconcile with the fact that while I'm on an all-expenses paid trip with my world-renown university, he is choking on tear gas and dodging rubber bullets because he has no hope for a better future in the world as he knows it? We were born into vastly different life experiences. The spectrum of possible reactions ranges from sickening guilt to ambivalent acceptance. Surely he protests for the right to the lifestyle I enjoy, so why not enjoy it? Yet in some way, I feel that that acceptance cements my privilege at the expense of his.

I like what our professor, Mbaye Lo, shared with us the other night. He said that as his father dropped him off for his first day of school, he told him, "this education is not for you to get a job, but for you to help those who cannot help themselves." The privilege I was born into has afforded me an education, like most of you reading this blog. The education we have does not denote any type of superiority and inferiority, but rather a disparity in opportunity. We may not be in control of where and what we're born into, but we are responsible for our ensuing actions. It is easy to come to terms with the third world from outside of it, but I invite you to consider how unsettling it can be from within.